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Saturday, 2 March 2013

The Artemis Fowl Files by Eoin Colfer – Book Review

‘How much do you know about the
infamous Artemis Fowl and the People? Become an expert on everything in
Artemis’ world, with this hilarious and essential guide to the Artemis Fowl
books.

Featuring:

·Two brand-new short
stories starring Mulch, the flatulent dwarf, and the irrepressible elf Holly
Short

·Interview with all the
characters

·A complete guide to
the fairy code

·A spotter’s guide to
the People

·Fairy quiz: how to
tell if you are a dwarf, troll, elf or pixie

·Map of all fairy
transport locations

·Manual of Foaly’s
inventions

·Fairy word searches
and crossword puzzles

·Interview with Eoin
Colfer

FANS OF THE SERIES WON’T WANT TO
BE CAUGHT (ABOVE OR UNDERGROUND) WITHOUT IT ….’

Artemis
Fowl Files is an ancillary book in the Artemis Fowl octet written by the Irish
author Eoin Colfer. It was released during the gap between the release of Artemis Fowl and the Eternity Code and Artemis Fowl and the Opal Deception.

It
contains interviews, some puzzles, the Gnommish script decoder, interviews with
the characters and the better part of the whole thing, two short stories. One
of them is an event that takes place before the start of the series, which is
Holly Short’s promotion to the rank of a captain and also her admission into
the Recon. The second story, The Seventh
Dwarf is a recollection of an event that takes place after the completion
of book one but before Arctic Incident where Mulch and Artemis, together, try
to steal a tiara.

I
found the stories to be good, especially the first one – Holly was her usual
self, as good as ever. While the idea of the second one was good, I felt it to
be logically inconsistent – for in the Arctic incident, while neither Holly nor
Artemis say anything to indicate that they’ve not met during the interim period,
nevertheless, one of what Butler said was clearly indicating how he had no idea
about Mulch after the Fowl Manor siege.

I
found the additions, quite boring, especially when I read it after five years.
Yes, when I was a thirteen year old, the puzzles, the flashy diagrams of Foaly’s
inventions did have me fascinated but when I read it the second time, I found
the interviews dull (did Colfer interview himself or did he get someone else to
do it for him?), and I was particularly disappointed with the BIG REVEAL – that
is the Gnommish script. Before reading the Files, I expected something
different, something a little more complex, like Tengwar in The Lord of the
Rings but Gnommish just happens to be the Latin script with different
symbols and decoding requires no skill whatsoever.

While
I liked the two stories, there is nothing special about this otherwise
overpriced supposed ‘ultimate’ guide to the Artemis Fowl books. For the sake of
those two short stories, I’d rate it a little more than ‘bad’, to a neither
here nor there rating – that is five on ten.